The body is the most ancient & under-utilised technology

I was listening to a video by Dr Zach Bush yesterday & he described our separation from our local living ecologies as the 'original wound we are all seeking to heal'. I couldn't agree more.

This is at the heart of my PhD thesis as I grappled with the question - "If so many people know we are disconnected, and we've known (and seen) the impacts of that for over 50 years, then how do we come home? How do you reconnect in a way that heals this wound of separation that seems to ripple through all areas of our life?"

Through my eco-somatic research & practice, here's what I learned:

Reconnection is not an idea. We can't think our way into it. Connection is an embodied experience.

As the famous phenomenological philosopher, Merleau-Ponty, shares that just like surfing a wave, learning how to experience something “cannot be formulated in detachment from that effort".

In other words, connection is a somatic PRACTICE. Not a concept.

When I consider this, I'm reminded of the incredible film Avatar. Particularly, the scene where the Na'vi connect their hair to the mother tree, Ewa, and through that felt body-to-body connection, they receive information, they receive nourishment, they receive that sense of spiritual belonging and oneness with the cosmos.

But ironically, a lot of people in the spiritual new age are opting for a state of transcendence. Of coming OUT of the body to experience those ecstatic states of conjunctive union. However, living in one of Australia's spiritual hotspots, I've seen the shadow side of this.

I've witnessed many transient spiritual gypsy folk consistently tell me that they don't know where they belong, they don't have a place, and often, due to the lack of deep embodiment, they don't even have a place inside themselves.

But thankfully, the remedy is actually quite simple.

I've learned from various Elders & wise ones over the years that when you're wandering through the bush, the medicine is often found closest to the poison. Meaning the answer has been walking around with us all along.

So often, the solution to socio-ecological rupture is believed to be technology.

"If we only had more solar power, or more efficient cars, or better waste management, or amazing AI then everything would be better"

And yet the technology lies within you.

Your body is our most ancient and under-utilised technology for knowing, being, and relating to the living ecologies we belong to.

Your body is the bridge home, a living thread woven into the fabric of the Earth, whispering that you have never truly been lost—only asleep.

And to reconnect in this way is what it truly means to awaken.